_A FATAL DIVORCE_
"_They feared the Lord, and served their own gods._"
--2 KINGS xvii. 24-34.
And that is an old-world record, but it is quite a modern experience. The
kinsmen of these ancient people are found in our own time. Men still fear
one God and serve another.
But something is vitally wrong when men can divorce their fear from their
obedience. And the beginning of the wrong is in the fear itself. "Fear,"
as used in this passage, is a counterfeit coin, which does not ring true
to the truth. It means only the payment of outward respect, a formal
recognition, a passing nod which we give on the way to something better.
It is a mere skin courtesy behind which there is no beating heart; a
hollow convention in which there is no deep and sacred awe.
But the real "fear of God" is a spiritual mood in which virtue thrives, an
atmosphere in which holy living is quite inevitable. "The fear of the Lord
is _clean_." It is not lip-worship, but heart-homage, a reverence in which
the soul is always found upon its knees. And so "the fear of the Lord is
to hate evil"; it is an indignant repulsion from all that is hateful to
God. It is the sharing of the Spirit of the Lord. There cannot be any true
fear where the soul does not worship "in spirit and in truth."